Why you can’t find
the place where
you belong” ~ “Running Away ~KAYA~ Bob Marley

I don’t know exactly when I started running from my self, but from a very young age, I was never really felt comfortable in my own skin. Escapism took form in play; Granpa’s old cameras; Hotwheels, Matchbox and Tonka trucks seemed to provide an outlet to escape the world where I lived. Oddly, that world wasn’t one that necessarily needed an escape, there was no horror or abuse to cope with, yet I sought the security of imagination.

As I got older, the toys changed and the play cameras became real ones, a series of moves from neighborhoods on Chicago’s Southside to a small town in Northern Illinois, and the angst of adolescent awkwardness brought an even greater sense of insecurity, commonplace I am sure, but seemingly compounded to me at the time.

I drank alcohol for the first time at 12, and smoked weed for the first time at 15, which was also the same year I feel in love for the first time…but I didn’t realize it was love…cuz it was an emotion for another boy…and being gay wasn’t, well as “out” as it is now.

But I think this is where the running really started…when my energy and feelings for the classmate weren’t shared or returned, I began to isolate and shut my self off from people to a degree, even thou there were people around who I shared friendship with, I never really noticed it for I was withdrawn over the one who spurned my affections.

This was the set course for many years to come. Falling for ones who were unwilling or unable to return the emotions I felt and wanted to share.

I was always running away…from really the hatred I felt for self…for I felt there must be something wrong with me as I being “rejected” from ones who didn’t want to share what I had to give; and too, like the addict…I always wanted more than what they were willing to share.

Funny (not really) how I was constantly drawn to people who would fulfill my “density “ of abandonment and undeserving of love issue I had begun to foster at such a young, young age.

With this delusion of reality I would always focus one the ones who raised my emotions and then be clueless to those around me who were willing to share some of them selves with me.

There is one, who I have referred to as “the One” (who wasn’t) who impacted my life the most. I still to this day have emotions for him, yet they have subsided some, but they still do exist.

After some time at the Integratron and in mediation, I have come to the realization that the intensity that I feel for him is because we were connected in a past life. I have been able to ease some of the intensity for him since this understanding has come to me. I can’t change a feeling/energy that has been carried throughout time, over centuries.

One of the greatest gifts that come from maintaining a brain free of outside chemical influence is, what the medical professionals call “corrective emotional breakthroughs”

These breakthroughs are the “head rushes” of clean time, for they make me just kind of open my eyes and say, “ WHOA! WOW! That was pretty cool”

The breakthrough theme as of late is that I have impacted each person that has come into my life (and they me) in one way or another.

Recently, in the last few months, two people have contacted me via my Flickr account from my past, who, in all honesty, I thought were dead. Thru our present conversations, they indicated a good vibe between us.

Yet I was so consumed by a misdirected energy I felt for the One (who wasn’t) that I couldn’t see the energy between myself and other people.

In the last year, I have become reacquainted with high school peers who, through conversation, also indicated energy towards me that I didn’t realize existed.

This energy is to most, friendship. But thru my mental deficiencies, I was unable to see that at the time.

I need to be aware of whom I surround my self with…and how I interact with those that come into my life. I have to remain aware of the presence that exists in the moment. And express gratitude to those who enrich my life. And even to those who teach by toxicity, I am grateful for, but when the lesson is learned, I must move on…away.

Somewhere along the way, in the time that has passed since my last ingestion of a drug or a drink, I have stopped running and I have grown accustomed to life within my own skin. I accept every facet of what I am…good and bad and work to establish a balance between accentuating the positive and minimizing the negative, which will always be a progressive path.